This virus thingy is getting to me

In order to keep up this year's resolution of reading two French books a month, I toodled off to the largest bookshop in town and picked a couple up last Monday.

One of them is a crime story by Jean-Luc Bannalec, a name I was already familiar with. "Great," I thought. "A new French crime writer." The story is called "Un été à Pont-Aven".

Imagine my astonishment when, sitting comfortably at home,  I read the information on the first few pages of the book that tells me that Jean-Luc Bannalec is the pseudonym of a German writer. What a swizz! I'm reading the French translation of a book originally published in German!!

Notwithstanding my slight disappointment at not reading an original French book, I plunge into the story. At one point, the main character, Commissaire Georges Dupin, goes to eat something in a cafe. And as he sits down at a table outside, what thought wandered through my mind? "I hope he's sitting far enough away from other people there."

It gave me a bit of a jolt to realise that these so-called 'social distancing' rules were now pretty much ingrained in my mind. I wonder whether these sorts of rules will crop up in novels that are set in this period of time. It'll be interesting to see.